Exploring The
"Singularity"

JAMES JOHN BELL
/The Futurist 1may03

The point in
time when current trends may go wildly off the charts—known as the
"Singularity"— is now getting serious attention. What it suggests
is that technological change will soon become so rapid that we cannot possibly
envision its results.

Technological change isn't just happening fast. It's
happening at an exponential rate. Contrary to the commonsense, intuitive, linear
view, we won't just experience 100 years of progress in the twenty-first century—it
will be more like 20,000 years of progress.

The near-future results of exponential technological growth
will be staggering: the merging of biological and nonbiological entities in
biorobotics, plants and animals engineered to grow pharmaceutical drugs,
software-based "life," smart robots, and atom-sized machines that
self-replicate like living matter. Some individuals are even warning that we
could lose control of this expanding techno-cornucopia and cause the total
extinction of life as we know it. Others are researching how this permanent
technological overdrive will affect us. They're trying to understand what this
new world of ours will look like and how accelerating technology already impacts
us.

A number of scientists believe machine intelligence will
surpass human intelligence within a few decades, leading to what's come to be
called the Singularity. Author and inventor Ray Kurzweil defines this phenomenon
as "technological change so rapid and profound it could create a rupture
in the very fabric of human history."

Singularity is technically a mathematical term, perhaps best
described as akin to what happens on world maps in a standard atlas. Everything
appears correct until we look at regions very close to the poles. In the
standard Mercator projection, the poles appear not as points but as a straight
line. Each line is a singularity: Everywhere along the top line contains the
exact point of the North Pole, and the bottom line is the entire South Pole.

The singularity on the edge of the map is nothing compared to
the singularity at the center of a black hole. Here one finds the
astrophysicist's singularity, a rift in the continuum of space and time where
Einstein's rules no longer function. The approaching technological Singularity,
like the singularities of black holes, marks a point of departure from reality.
Explorers once wrote "Beyond here be dragons" on the edges
of old maps of the known world, and the image of life as we approach these edges
of change are proving to be just as mysterious, dangerous, and controversial.

There is no concise definition for the Singularity. Kurzweil
and many transhumanists define it as "a future time when societal,
scientific, and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will
happen from our present perspective." A range of dates is given for the
advent of the Singularity. "I'd be surprised if it happened
before 2004 or after 2030," writes author and computer science professor
Vernor Vinge. A distinctive feature will be that machine intelligence will have
exceeded and even merged with human intelligence. Another definition is used by
extropians, who say it denotes "the singular time when technological
development will be at its fastest." From an environmental perspective, the
Singularity can be thought of as the point at which technology and nature become
one. Whatever perspective one takes, at this juncture the world as we have known
it will become extinct, and new definitions of life, nature, and human
will take hold.

Many leading technology industries have been aware of the
possibility of a Singularity for some time. There are concerns that, if the
public understood its ramifications, they might panic over accepting new and
untested technologies that bring us closer to Singularity. For now, the debate
about the consequences of the Singularity has stayed within the halls of
business and technology; the kinks are being worked out, avoiding
"doomsday" hysteria. At this time, it appears to matter little if the
Singularity ever truly comes to pass.

What Will Singularity Look Like?

Kurzweil explains that central to the workings of the
Singularity are a number of "laws," one of which is Moore's
law. Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore noted that the number of transistors that
could fit on a single computer chip had doubled every year for six years from
the beginnings of integrated circuits in 1959. Moore predicted that the trend
would continue, and it has—although the doubling rate was later adjusted to an
18-month cycle.

Today, the smallest transistors in chips span only thousands
of atoms (hundreds of nanometers). Chip-makers build such components using a
process in which they apply semiconducting, metallic, and insulating layers to a
semiconductor wafer to create microscopic circuitry. They accomplish the
procedure using light for imprinting patterns onto the wafer. ht order to keep
Moore's law moving right along, researchers today have built circuits out of
transistors, wires, and other components as tiny as a few atoms across that can
carry out simple computations.

Unmanned
Combat Air Vehicle equipped with preprogrammed objectives and
preliminary targeting information, known as the Boeing X-45A. It will be
programmed by 2010 to distinguish friends from foes without consulting
humans and to independently attack targets in designated areas, says
author Bell.

VeriChip
[See AP
21jul03 and Fortune
22dec03], an implantable identification device, can be
used in a variety of security, emergency, and health-care applications.
Information on the VeriChip is read via specialized digital reader. Such
identification devices blur the line between biology and robotics, one
of the signs of the coming Singularity, according to author Bell.

Kurzweil and Sun Microsystems' chief scientist Bill Joy agree
that, circa 2030, the technology of the 1999 film The Matrix (which
visualized a three-dimensional interface between humans and computers, calling
conventional reality into question) will be within our grasp and that humanity
will be teetering on the edge of the Singularity. (See their essays in Taking
the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix, edited by
Glenn Yeffeth, 2003.) Kurzweil explains that this will become possible because
Moore's law will be replaced by another computing paradigm over the next few
decades. "Moore's law was not the first but the fifth paradigm to provide
exponential growth of computing power," Kurzweil says. The first paradigm
of computer technology was the data processing machinery used in the 1890
American census. This electromechanical computing technology was followed by the
paradigms of relay-based technology, vacuum tubes, transistors, and eventually
integrated circuits. "Every time a paradigm ran out of
steam," states Kurzweil, "another paradigm came along and picked up
where that paradigm left off." The sixth paradigm, the one that will enable
technology á la The Matrix, will be here in 20 to 30 years. "It's
obvious what the sixth paradigm will be—computing in three dimensions,"
says Kurzweil. "We will effectively merge with our
technology."

Stewart Brand in his book The Clock of the Long Now discusses
the Singularity and another related law, Monsanto's law, which states that the
ability to identify and use genetic information doubles every 12 to 24 months.
This exponential growth in biological knowledge is transforming agriculture,
nutrition, and health care in the emerging life-sciences industry.

A field of research building on the exponential growth rate of
biotechnology is nanotechnology—the science of building machines out of atoms.
A nanometer is atomic in scale, a distance that's 0.001% of the width of human
hair. One goal of this science is to change the atomic fabric of matter—to
engineer machinelike atomic structures that reproduce like living matter. In
this respect, it is similar to biotechnology, except that nanotechnology needs
to literally create something like an inorganic version of DNA to drive the
building of its tiny machines. "We're working out the rules of biology in a
realm where nature hasn't had the opportunity to work," states University
of Texas biochemistry professor Angela Belcher. "What would take millions
of years to evolve on its own takes about three weeks on the bench top."

Machine progress is knocking down the barriers between all
the sciences. Chemists, biologists, engineers, and physicists are now finding
themselves collaborating on more and more experimental research. This
collaboration is best illustrated by the opening of Cornell University's
Nanobiotechnology Center and other such facilities around the world. These
scientists predict breakthroughs soon that will open the way to molecular-size computing and
the quantum computer, creating new scientific paradigms where exponential
technological progress will leap off the map. Those who have done the
exponential math quickly realize the possibilities in numerous industries and
scientific fields—and then they notice the anomaly of the Singularity
happening within this century.

In 2005, IBM plans to introduce Blue Gene, a supercomputer that
can perform at about 5% of the power of the human brain. This computer could
transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress in less than two
seconds. Blue Gene/L, specifically developed to advance and serve the growing
life-sciences industry, is expected to operate at about 200 teraflops (200
trillion floating-point operations per second), larger than the total computing
power of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. It will be able to run
extremely complex simulations, including breakthroughs in computers and
information technology, creating new frontiers in biology, says IBM's Paul M.
Horn. According to Moore's law, computer hardware will surpass human brainpower
in the first decade of this century. Software that emulates the human mind—artificial
intelligence—may take another decade to evolve.

Nanotech Advances Promote Singularity

Physicists, mathematicians, and scientists like Vinge and
Kurzweil have identified through their research the likely boundaries of the
Singularity and have predicted with confidence various paths leading up to it
over the next couple of decades. These scientists are currently debating what
discovery could set off a chain reaction of Earth-altering technological events.
They suggest that advancements in the fields of nanotechnology or the discovery
of artificial intelligence could usher in the Singularity.

The majority of people closest to these theories and laws—the
tech sector—can hardly wait for these technologies to arrive. The true
believers call themselves extropians, posthumans, and transhumanists, and are
actively organizing not just to bring the Singularity about, but to counter the
technophobes and neo-Luddites who believe that unchecked technological progress
will exceed our ability to reverse any destructive process that might
unintentionally be set in motion.

The antithesis to neo-Luddite activists is the extropians.
For example, the Progress Action Coalition, formed in 2001 by bioartist,
author, and extropian activist Natasha Vita-More, fantasizes about "the
dream of true artificial intelligence .. . adding a new richness to the human
landscape never before known." Pro-Act, AgBioworld, Biotechnology Progress,
Foresight Institute, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, and other industry
groups acknowledge, however, that the greatest threat to technological progress
comes not just from environmental groups, but from a small faction of the
scientific community.

Knowledge-Enabled Mass Destruction

In April 2000, a wrench was thrown into the arrival of the
Singularity by an unlikely source: Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill joy. He
is a neo-Luddite without being a Luddite, a technologist warning the world about
technology. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems, helped create the Unix computer
operating system, and developed the Java and Jini software systems—systems
that helped give the Internet "life."

In a now-infamous cover story in Wired magazine, "Why
the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy warned of the dangers posed by
developments in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Joy's warning of the
impacts of exponential technological progress run amok gave new credence to the
coming Singularity. Unless things change, Joy predicted, "We could be the
last generation of humans." Joy warned that "knowledge alone will
enable mass destruction" and termed this phenomenon "knowledge-enabled
mass destruction."

The twentieth century gave rise to nuclear, biological, and
chemical (NBC) technologies that, while powerful, require access to vast amounts
of raw (and often rare) materials, technical information, and large-scale
industries. The twenty-first-century technologies of genetics, nanotechnology,
and robotics (GNR), however, will require neither large facilities nor rare raw
materials.

Keys To Understanding
Singularity

Singularity
is the postulated point in our
future when human evolutionary development—powered by such developments
as nanotechnology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence—accelerates
enormously so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived.
Typical developments include the merging of man and machine (cybernetic
organisms—or cyborgs) and accelerated technology beyond our ability to
control.

Nanotechnology is
the development and use of devices that have a size of only a few
nanometers, including building and manipulating complex structures on an
atomic scale. As we approach the Singularity, nanodevices will be able to
replicate themselves like living matter.

Biorobotics is
the merging of living much of the world has no voice in how the world is
run. Twenty-first-century GNR technologies, he writes, "are being
developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises. We are aggressively
pursuing the promises of these new technologies within the
now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial
incentives and competitive pressures."

Cloning is the growing of genetically identical cells, eliminating
the natural role of human biology and bringing us closer to the
Singularity.

Extropians await the Singularity, seeking to overcome human limits,
live indefinitely long, and become more intelligent through technology.
Related groups include transhumanists and posthumanists.

Neo-Luddites oppose the impending Singularity by raising questions
about moral and ethical aspects of modern technology and the threat it may
pose to humanity has followed biotech since its beginnings in the 1970s,
warns, "Biology is losing its connection with nature."

The threat posed by GNR technologies becomes further
amplified by the fact that some of these new technologies have been designed to
be able to replicate—i.e., they can build new versions of themselves. Nuclear
bombs did not sprout more bombs, and toxic spills did not grow more spills. If
the new self-replicating GNR technologies are released into the environment,
they could be nearly impossible to recall or control.

Joy understands that the greatest dangers we face ultimately
stem from a world where global corporations dominate—a future where Joy
believes that the system of global capitalism, combined with our current rate of
progress, gives the human race a 30% to 50% chance of going extinct around the
time the Singularity is expected to happen, around 2030. "Not
only are these estimates not encouraging," he adds, "but they do not
include the probability of many horrid outcomes that lie short of
extinction."

It is very likely that scientists and global corporations
will miss key developments—or, worse, actively avoid discussion of them. A
whole generation of biologists has left the field for the biotech and nanotech
labs. Biologist Craig Holdredge, who organisms with technologies. At a simple
level, this includes implanting chips encoded with health or security
information. Biorobotics also encompasses the development of cyborgs that
seamlessly blend living tissue with mechanical devices.

When Machines Make War

Cloning, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics are
blurring the lines between nature and machine. In his 1972 speech "The
Android and the Human," science-fiction visionary Philip K. Dick told his
audience, "Machines are becoming more human. Our environment, and I mean
our man-made world of machines, is becoming alive in ways specifically and
fundamentally analogous to ourselves." In the near future, Dick
prophesied, a human might shoot a robot only to see it bleed from its wound.
When the robot shoots back, it may be surprised to find the human gush smoke.
"It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them," Dick
added.

In November 2001, Advanced Cell Technology of Massachusetts
jarred the nation's focus away from recession and terrorism when it announced
that it had succeeded in cloning early-stage human embryos. Debate on the topic
stayed equally divided between those who support therapeutic cloning and those,
like the American Medical Association, who want an outright ban.

Karel Capek coined the word robot (Czech for "forced
labor") in the 1920 play R.U.R., in which machines assume the drudgery of
factory production, then develop feelings and proceed to wipe out humanity in a
violent revolution. While the robots in R.U.R. could represent the "nightmare
vision of the proletariat seen through middle-class eyes," as
science-fiction author Thomas Disch has suggested, they also are testament to
the persistent fears of man-made technology run amok.

Similar themes have manifested themselves in popular culture
and folklore since at least medieval times. While some might dismiss these
stories simply as popular paranoia, robots are already being deployed
beyond Hollywood and are poised to take over the deadlier duties of the modern
soldier. The Pentagon is replacing soldiers with sensors, vehicles, aircraft,
and weapons that can be operated by re\mote control or are
autonomous. Pilotless aircraft played an important role in the bombings of
Afghanistan, and a model called the Gnat conducted surveillance flights
in the Philippines in 2002.

The Singularity

Technological progress goes through four stages: new capability,
integration, technological limit, and decline as a new paradigm takes
over. Each new capability represents a technological revolution that gradually
gives rise to a new techno-economic paradigm, which guides entrepreneurs,
innovators, investors, and consumers. Singularity pioneer Vernor Vinge argues
that successive innovations will occur in progressively shorter time frames as
each new technology increases in power and converges with others, as when
advances in the life sciences are accelerated by increasing computer power.
Ever-shortening time periods make the aggregate power curve
"hyperexponential," with the resulting waves of technological
convergences eventually reaching the Singularity. —James John Bell

Technological Progress Grows Exponentially and
Reaches Infinity
in Finite Time

Chart is based on Tom McKendree's 1994 Singularity diagram for
Hughes
Aircraft, explaining anticipated effects of technological
acceleration on the
art of war. (McKendree's original drawing was
reproduced in Stewart Brand's 2000
book The Clock of the Long Now.)

Leading the Pentagon's remote-control warfare effort is the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Best known for creating the
infrastructure that became the World Wide Web, DARPA is working with
Boeing to develop the X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. The 30-foot-long
windowless planes will carry up to 12 bombs, each weighing 250 pounds. According
to military analysts, the X-45 will be used to attack radar and antiaircraft
installations as early as 2007. By 2010, it will be programmed to distinguish
friends from foes without consulting humans and independently attack targets in designated areas.
By 2020, robotic planes and vehicles will direct remote-controlled bombers
toward targets, robotic helicopters will coordinate driverless convoys, and
unmanned submarines will clear mines and launch cruise missiles.

Rising to the challenge of mixing man and machine, MIT's
Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (backed by a five-year, $50-million U.S.
Army grant) is busy innovating materials and designs to create military uniforms
that rival the best science fiction. Human soldiers themselves are being
transformed into modem cyborgs through robotic devices and nanotechnology.

The Biorobotic Arms Race

The 2002 International Conference on Robotics and Automation,
hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, kicked off its
technical session with a discussion on biorobots, the melding of living
and artificial structures into a cybernetic organism or cyborg.

"In the past few years, the biosciences and robotics
have been getting closer and closer," says Paolo Dario, founder of Italy's
Advanced Robotics Technology and Systems Lab. "More and more, biological
models are used for the design of biometric robots [and] robots are increasingly
used by neuroscientists as clinical platforms for validating biological
models." Artificial constructs are beginning to approach the scale and
complexity of living systems.

Some of the scientific breakthroughs expected in the next few
years promise to make cloning and robotics seem rather benign. The merging of
technology and nature has already yielded some shocking progeny. Consider these
examples:

Researchers at the State University of New York Health Science Center at
Brooklyn have turned a living rat into a radio-controlled automaton using
three electrodes placed in the animal's brain. The animal can be remotely
steered through an obstacle course, making it twist, turn, and jump on
demand.

In May 2002, eight elderly Florida residents were injected with
microscopic silicon identification chips encoded with medical information.
The Los Angeles Times reported that this made them "scannable
just like a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket checkout line."
Applied Digital Solutions Inc., the maker of the chip, will soon have a
prototype of an implantable device able to receive GPS satellite signals and
transmit a person's location.

Human embryos have been successfully implanted and grown in artificial
wombs. The experiments were halted after a few days to avoid violating in
vitro fertilization regulations.

Researchers in Israel have fashioned a "bio-computer" out of DNA
that can handle a billion operations per second with 99.8% accuracy. Reuters
reports that these bio-computers are so minute that "a trillion of them
could fit inside a test tube."

In England, University of Reading Professor Kevin Warwick has implanted
microchips in his body to remotely monitor and control his physical motions.
During Warwick's Project Cyborg experiments, computers were able to remotely
monitor his movements and open doors at his approach.

Engineers at the U.S. Sandia National Labs have built a remote-controlled
spy robot equipped with a scanner, microphone, and chemical microsensor. The
robot weighs one ounce and is smaller than a dime. Lab scientists predict
that the microdot could prove invaluable in protecting U.S. military and
economic interests.

The next arms race is not based on replicating and perfecting
a single deadly technology, like the nuclear bombs of the past or some
space-based weapon of the future. This new arms race is about accelerating the
development and integration of advanced autonomous, biotechnological, and
human-robotic systems into the military apparatus. A mishap or a massive war
using these new technologies could be more catastrophic than any nuclear war.

Where the Map Exceeds The Territory

The rate at which GNR technologies are being adopted by our
society—without regard to long-term safety testing or researching the
political, cultural, and economic ramifications—mirrors the development and
proliferation of nuclear power and weapons. The human loss caused by
experimentation, production, and development is still being felt from the era of
NBC technologies.

The discussion of the environmental impacts of GNR
technologies, at least in the United States, has been relegated to the margins.
Voices of concern and opposition have like-wise been missing in discussions of
the technological Singularity. The true cost of this technological progress and
any coming Singularity will mean the unprecedented decline of the planet's
inhabitants at an ever-increasing rate of global extinction. The World
Conservation Union, the International Botanical Congress, and a majority of the
world's biologists believe that a global mass extinction already is under way.
As a direct result of human activity (resource extraction, industrial
agriculture, the introduction of non-native animals, and population growth), up
to one-fifth of all living species are expected to disappear within 30 years. A
1998 Harris Poll of the 5,000 members of the American Institute of Biological
Sciences found that 70% believed that what has been termed "The Sixth
Extinction" is now under way. A simultaneous Harris Poll found
that 60% of the public were totally unaware of the impending biological
collapse.

At the same time that nature's ancient biological creation is
on the decline, laboratory-created biotech life-forms—genetically modified
soybeans, genetically engineered salmon, cloned sheep, drug-crops, biorobots—are
on the rise.

Nature and technology are not just evolving; they are
competing and combining with one another. Ultimately they will become one. We
hear reports daily about these new technologies and new creations, while shreds
of the ongoing biological collapse surface here and there. Past the edges of
change, beyond the wall across the future, anything becomes possible. Beware
the dragons.

About the Author

James John Bell is writer/ director and network administrator for the environmental
communications firm Sustain (www.sustainusa.org). He recently wrote the foreword
for the 2003 reprinting of John Brunner's
science-fiction novel The Sheep Look Up, available
in June. Portions of this essay were excerpted from his foreword.

[Update 5 June 2004] He is a writer/director/producer for
the strategic communications nonprofit the smartMeme Strategy & Training
Project (http://www.smartmeme.com/)
His new email is james@smartmeme.com
and new mailing address is 2103 Harrison Ave #2341 Olympia WA 98502.

Resources On The Web

Visit the following Web sites to find out more about the
Singularity and related technologies.

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

( www.singinst.org
)
is a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, devoted solely to
creating the Singularity by direct research into Singularity technologies and
direct implementation of the Singularity. They provide forums for discussion,
coordinate Singularity-related efforts, and publish introductory material and
research papers.